Holocaust in Hungary Is an Enigma

Holocaust in Hungary was a very strange episode in the Shoah – and the deadliest outside Poland. It was the deadliest because of its enormous death toll – 564,000 with over 434,000 murdered (in Auschwitz-Birkenau) in less than two months, from May 15 to July 9 of 1944. And it was very strange because none of it made any sense at all (even in the perverted Nazi logic).

By spring of 1944, Hungary had a Jewish population of 825,000, the largest remaining in Europe, further swollen by Jews escaping from elsewhere to the relative safety of that country.

The Hungarian moderate Prime Minister Mikl;s K;llay had been reluctant to deport them and was supported by Hungarian Regent Admiral Mikl;s Horthy who had no desire to be involved in murderous endeavors of his Nazi allies which for him made no sense.

Actually, after failure of German blitzkrieg in December of 1941 (and American entry into the war), Horthy started to put some distance between himself and Hitler’s regime figuring (correctly) that after these disasters the war would not end well for the Axis powers.

By early 1944, he made a crucial mistake – instead of pursuing neutrality, he decided to switch sides and join the Allies (thus betraying Adolf Hitler). It was a catastrophic mistake which became one especially for the Jews.

Sensing that Hungary was trying to betray him (K;llay already negotiated conditions under which Hungary would switch sides), Hitler ordered the invasion and occupation of his ally codenamed Operation Margarethe.

 Being a complete surprise, the occupation was quick and bloodless – and was complete in just one day – on March 19. Having no other choice, Horthy (to protect nominal independence of his country) promptly fired K;llay.

And replaced him with staunchly pro-German – he was ambassador to Berlin for many years – D;me Szt;jay (interestingly, the latter was ethnic Serb – his real name was Dimitrije Stojakovic).

Szt;jay immediately legalized the Arrow Cross Party. During the four days’ interregnum following the German occupation, the Ministry of the Interior was placed in the hands of L;szl; Endre and L;szl; Baky, known for their hostility to Jews. Their boss, Andor Jaross, was another committed anti-Semite. Both steps spelled a genuine catastrophe for Jews in Hungary.

Following the German occupation, Adolf Eichmann was dispatched to Hungary and ordered by Himmler to arrange the deportation of 550,000 Hungarian Jews – including Jews from territories that had been annexed from Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia – to Auschwitz-Birkenau for gassing. Hungarian authorities were expected to be fully cooperative.

The 550,000-lives question was: why on Earth would want to murder more than half a million of Hungarian Jews (and in such a short time) when it made no sense at all even in a perverted logic of the Nazis?

It is highly unlikely that he acted on Hitler’s orders: first, by that time Hitler did not care about anything outside purely military matters (even about the Jews); and second, later events directly contradicted this theory.

Contrary to a widespread misconception, Himmler was no Nazi fanatic – he was a highly pragmatic politician and statesman. True, in 1941 he most likely subscribed to the idea that in order to win the existential war with the Bolshevist USSR and its Western Allies, the Nazis had to exterminate all Jews under their control… but by March 1944 it was painfully (literally) obvious that the war was lost – regardless of what would happen to the Jews under German control.

So why bother – and waste critically valuable resources on a totally useless job? And then again – if he held this belief, why did he stop on July 7th? Officially, Horthy stopped them… but at that time he was already powerless so Himmler could have simply ignored his orders (and the Arrow Cross boys would be happy to help him – as would the pro-Nazi Hungarian police and Ministry of the Interior)?

Still, Himmler gave his orders – and trains with Hungarian Jews began rolling into Auschwitz-Birkenau on a daily basis – like clockwork.

Adolf Eichmann set up his office in the Majestic Hotel in Budapest (no surprise here). The Yellow Star and ghettoization laws, and the deportations, were accomplished in less than eight weeks, with the enthusiastic help of the Hungarian authorities, particularly the gendarmerie (so much for the power of Horthy).

The plan was to use 45 cattle cars per train, four trains a day, to deport 12,000 Jews from the countryside every day, starting in mid-May; this was to be followed by the deportation of Jews from Budapest from about 15 July.

Rudolf H;ss, the first commandant of Auschwitz, returned to the camp on May 8 to oversee the Hungarian Jews’ arrival and immediate gassing. As a result, the Hungarian operation got the name Aktion H;ss.

The first (“pilot”) train left Budapest on April 29, 1944 carrying 1,800 Jewish men and women aged 16–50 who were (initially) deemed fit to work. A second train left Topolya (now in Serbia) on the next day carrying 2,000. The transports went through “selection”; 616 women and 486 men were selected for work duties, and 2,698 (71%) were sent straight to gas chambers.

The regular mass transports of the Jews, the first organized by the RSHA (still the lead agency in the “Holocaust Project”) began leaving Hungary for Auschwitz on May 14 1944. The Hungarian government was in charge of them up to the northern border – then the SS took over.

On a typical day, there were three or four trains, each carrying 3,000-4,000 Jews. There were 109 trains until June 16. On some days, there were six trains… the ten, then eighteen. Another ten trains were sent to Auschwitz via other routes.

The first three trains, each consisting of 40–50 cars, arrived at Auschwitz on May 16th. After unloading their belongings, the deportees were organized into rows of five, then led to the gas chambers.

By July 9, 1944, 434,351 Jews in 147 trains had been deported to Auschwitz, according to L;szl; Ferenczy of the Hungarian Royal Gendarmerie. According to Edmund Veesenmayer, the Reich plenipotentiary in Hungary, the number was 437,402. About 80% were gassed on arrival. Because the crematoria were unable to cope with the number of corpses, pits were dug where bodies were burned.

The (temporarily) spared 20% were used as slave laborers or (a relatively small numbers) in medical experiments. On May 28th, 963 were transferred from Auschwitz I to Mauthausen; and on June 5th, 2,000 were sent to the Buchenwald. The following day, some were transferred to Auschwitz III, a labor camp for IG Farben, and another 2,000 were sent to Mauthausen that day and on June 13th.

Just before the deportations of Jews from Budapest began, the Vrba–Wetzler report reached the Allies. The report provided a detailed description of the gas chambers, and what was happening inside the camp; it had been dictated in April 1944 by two Auschwitz escapees, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler.

However, the report was of little value – unlike with previous deportations, the SS did not even try to conceal these serial mass murders – everything was done in plain sight. Which made some sense – with Allied Air Forces ruling the skies, their recon planes saw pretty well what was happening to Hungarian Jews – and where.

World leaders, including Pope Pius XII on June 25th (Hungary was Roman Catholic), President Roosevelt on the next day June, and King Gustaf V of Sweden on June 30th, appealed to Horthy to stop the deportations.

Roosevelt threatened military retaliation; on July 7th, Horthy ordered an end to them… and they stopped. Which made no sense as Roosevelt’s threat was empty (his land forces were too far away – and his bombers were far too busy supporting Allied invasion of Western Europe).

And he had no power anyway – Hungary was an occupied nation and thus was run by Wehrmacht and the SS, not by Hungarian authorities. Still, the deportation stopped… but it did not put an end to Holocaust in Hungary.

In October 1944, Horthy negotiated a cease-fire with the Soviets and ordered Hungarian troops to lay down their arms. In response, on October 15th, Nazi Germany launched the covert Operation Panzerfaust which took Horthy into “protective custody” in Germany and forced him to abdicate on October 16th.

Sz;lasi (leader of ‘Arrow Cross Party far-right pro-Nazi ultranationalist party) was made “Leader of the Nation” and prime minister of an Arrow Cross-dominated “Government of National Unity” the same day.

His rule was short – but brutal. In under three months, their death squads killed as many as 38,000 Hungarian Jews and sent some 80,000 Jews out of the city on slave labor details (from which many did not return) and many more to SS camps in Germany (ditto). The Allies did not interfere in any way – and neither did Stalin. 

Now the mystery deepens. First, there is a mystery of “Hungarian Gold Train”. A government official appointed by the SS, ;rp;d Toldi, concocted a plan to evacuate much of looted Jewish valuables out of Hungary… to no-one-knows-where.

Toldi ordered large amounts of the valuables loaded onto a 46-car freight train that headed for Germany via Austria. According to various reports about the train, the contents included gold, gold jewelry, gems, diamonds, pearls, watches, and currency (mostly US dollars and Swiss francs).

Jewish organizations and the Hungarian government estimated the total value of the train’s contents at $350 million in 1945 or almost $6 billion in 2024 adjusted for inflation. Toldi and his family left the train with a large amount of gold on March 30, 1945 – it was never recovered.

After passing from Hungary directly into Austria, the train stopped occasionally to transfer amounts of the gold to trucks. The fate of the gold on those trucks remains unknown. No one knows how much of value disappeared into thin year… except that it was in the US$ billions in today’s prices.

And now there is another mystery – the Budapest mission of one Raul Wallenberg… actually, it was not just him. Wallenberg, Carl Lutz (Swedish consul in Budapest), Angelo Rotta, the Apostolic nuncio of the Holy See and some others issued “protective papers” that allegedly protected Jews from deportations to Auschwitz allegedly saving tens of thousands of Jewish lives.

Allegedly because in 1944, the SS did not care a rat’s ass about “papers” issued by neutral countries (whose governments did not care much about the Jews). Still, the SS, including Eichmann (!!!) accepted these papers – and Jewish lives were saved.

Now the mystery deepens (there is always a room for that). On January 17th, 1945, Wallenberg was called to Soviet General Malinovsky’s headquarters in Debrecen to answer allegations that he was engaged in espionage… and just disappeared.

On 8 March 1945, Soviet-controlled Hungarian radio announced that Wallenberg and his driver had been murdered on their way to Debrecen, suggesting that they had been killed by the Arrow Cross Party or the Gestapo… and everyone accepted.

However, it was a lie – Wallenberg was arrested by NKVD (on orders from the very top) and transferred to infamous Lubyanka prison in Moscow. According to Soviet authorities, he died from a heart attack on July 17, 1947… which is probably true.

Now why would Stalin risk good relationships with Sweden (at the time Wallenberg family owned half of Sweden) for… what? One alleged spy? Especially when everyone knew that Wallenberg had nothing to do with spying…

I have a theory – a conspiracy theory, sure – but it explains all these mysteries. By March 1944, Himmler knew that the war was lost for Germany – but he was not ready to give up on his SS.

So, he concocted a plan for the SS to go underground in post-war Europe to return to power when it becomes possible. In other words, to create a well-funded pan-European clandestine organization which subsequently became known as ODESSA.

However, he needed to transport the SS loot to Sweden and Switzerland; launder it – and equip hundreds of his trusted associates with passports of these nations. So, he started the new phase of Shoah – and offered to stop it is he gets what he wants.

And he got it; however, the Soviets got wind of it and wanted their piece of the pie. So, they arrested Wallenberg… but he knew nothing (he was a courier between Himmler and his family who delivered messages – not valuables). 

So, ODESSA – or Die Neue SS, or whatever – is most likely alive and well today – waiting for a chance for a comeback. For a mighty comeback – and not just in Europe, but in the whole Western Civilization.